A fluorinated ester is a compound useful as an intermediate for the synthesis of e.g. a fluorinated acyl fluoride or a fluorinated vinyl ether. The present applicants have proposed a series of processes, in which an esterification reaction, a fluorination reaction and a reaction to dissociate an ester bond, are combined, as a process for producing a fluorinated ester and a fluorinated acyl fluoride. They have also proposed a continuous process in which the fluorinated acyl fluoride produced by such a process is reused again for an esterification reaction (WO 00/56694).
Such a process is a process which essentially requires three steps i.e. the esterification step, the fluorination step and the step to dissociate an ester bond. Namely, it is a process in which the following fluorinated acyl fluoride (4) and the following compound (2) having a hydroxyl group, are subjected to an esterification reaction to obtain the following ester compound (3), which is fluorinated to obtain the following fluorinated ester (1), and the ester bond of the fluorinated ester (1) is dissociated to obtain a fluorinated acyl fluoride (4), which is used for the esterification reaction with the above compound (2) to carry out the same process (here, the meanings of symbols in the following formulae are the same as the meanings of the symbols mentioned hereinafter).

Further, as a process to obtain the fluorinated ester (1) more efficiently in a large amount, they have also proposed a process wherein a fluorinated diester having the same groups (RAF) at both terminals of the molecule, is synthesized by an esterification reaction, and the two ester bonds of the diester are dissociated to obtain twice by mol of a fluorinated acyl fluoride.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a process whereby a fluorinated ester (1) and a fluorinated acyl fluoride (4) can be produced in large amounts efficiently through a smaller number of steps than the above-mentioned process. Another object of the present invention is to provide a process for producing a fluorinated vinyl ether by using the fluorinated ester (1) and the fluorinated acyl fluoride (4) obtained by such a process.